Preparing for the unknown

NBC News

       “We sold about 800 so far, normally we wouldn’t sell 800 over five years probably.”
       Post Sept. 11, the country has contracted a widespread case of the jitters and some Americans have chosen to ease their nerves by stockpiling weapons, antibiotics, even gas masks.
       “I bought seven gas masks,” says one consumer. “They come with some type of filter that’s supposed to last six to eight hours.”
       Call it preparedness, call it bunker mentality. Whichever, for some the best offense to biological or chemical terrorism is a palpable defense — no matter how misguided.
       “This is by far and away the most demanded items I’ve ever seen here,” says John Brucato, the manager of a Baltimore, Maryland, military surplus store.
       He is talking about gas masks, which have no warranties or directions. Still they sell out as quickly as stores can stock them.
       Gary and Susan Jenkins traveled nearly an hour from Pennsylvania to buy 18 of them for their family.
       “It’s not that we’re driven by fear, but we just felt like it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared in case something should happen,” says Susan Jenkins.
       Others are choosing medical arsenals, stocking up on antibiotics known to fight anthrax, a bacterium which is high on the list of possible bioterrorism agents.
       Dr. Tina Alster, a Washington dermatologist, says some of her patients have come to her looking for answers.
       “If giving them an antibiotic prescription makes them feel like they’re more in control, I will give them that,” says Dr. Alster.
       But she does warn them the antibiotics may not be effective.

       The rush to stockpile may be providing some psychic comfort for Americans, but are drugs and gas masks necessary? Will they even work if an attack occurs?
       The answer, say experts, is no — not when we have no idea what kinds of chemical or biological agents terrorists have been able to obtain or are planning to unleash.
       “You wouldn’t know it was there,” says Dr. D.A. Henderson, an infectious disease specialist who studies bioterrorism. “You couldn’t see it. You couldn’t smell it. You wouldn’t know that a biologic agent had been released until later on as people got sick.”
       So Dr. Henderson says you would have to wear your gas mask 24 hours a day to be effective.
       “I would say the value of a gas mask is to the person selling it and to the person manufacturing it,” says Dr. Henderson. “They’re making money.”
       And what of the run on antibiotics? First off, it’s expensive and maybe more important, the drugs may not work.
       “The question is have you got the right one because it’s possible you may have an organism which is resistant to that particular antibiotic,”says Dr. Henderson. “So you may have the wrong antibiotic.”
       Henderson says it’s the same problem the government faces as it stockpiles antibiotics. Bioengineering may have enabled terrorists to acquire antibiotic-resistant strains of biological weapons such as anthrax. The government has had an anthrax vaccine for nearly 50 years.
       Why not vaccinate the public against anthrax? “Well, there’s not enough vaccine to vaccinate more than maybe a few tens of thousands at this point,” says Dr. Henderson.
       And it’s unclear just how safe the anthrax vaccine is from side effects.
       Smallpox is another feared biological weapon that could cause a deadly epidemic. Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in the 1970s, but with a potentially dangerous vaccine.
       “The smallpox vaccine is not innocuous. About one in 500,000 people died of smallpox as a result of vaccination,” says Dr. Henderson.
       And many others became very ill.
       “You can be exposed to smallpox,” says Dr. Henderson. “You can be vaccinated as much as two to three days afterwards and it will be prevented.”
       So Henderson says the smallpox vaccine would not be administered until there were at least 100 detectable cases.
       So is the message to the public you are right to be fearful that something may happen, but there’s really nothing you can do? “That is correct,” says Dr. Henderson.
       That’s not very reassuring.
       “I wish we could do something simple that we could say, ‘Get this and you’ll be protected,’” says Henderson. “We don’t have that possibility of saying that at this time.”
       But there are some common sense measures you can take that don’t involve a trip to a military surplus store — such as knowing where your local hospital is located, keeping emergency numbers posted near the telephone, buying a first aid kit, extra batteries, portable radio, a flashlight, and getting a cell phone. That may help stem a true epidemic many observers see spreading in these days of uncertainty — one of fear.